In Namibia … we are clear … No exploitation of man by man.
That will not be allowed here – Namibia’s President Sam Nujoma in an interview in a Namibia special report of the
New African magazinein 2003.

December 8, 2014 -- Nordic
Africa Institute, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with the author's permission -- On November 28, 2014, close to 900,000 Namibians
of a registered electorate of some 1.2 million (a bit more than half of
Namibia’s total population, estimated at 2.3 million) voted in the
country’s fifth parliamentary and presidential elections since independence.

The result was predictable, though the dimensions of the overwhelming
dominance of the former liberation movement SWAPO (South West Africa People's Organisation) did surprise. While
SWAPO secured in every election since 1994 well above a two-thirds
majority, this time the result crossed the 80% mark. The party’s
presidential candidate Hage Geingob topped this by a whopping 86%.

"As Namibian youth, and as
Africans, you must therefore be on the full alert and remain vigilant against
deceptive attempts by opportunists and unpatriotic elements that attempt to
divide you. As the future leaders of our country, you should act with
dedication and commitment; to always promote the interests of the SWAPO Party
and the national interests before your own. It is only through that manner that
the SWAPO Party will grow from strength to strength and continue to rule
Namibia for the next ONE THOUSAND YEARS". --Sam Nujoma, Founding Father1 of the Republic of Namibia, in a speech to
the SWAPO Youth League in 2010

This
paper explores some aspects of the narrow translation of a liberation movement -- an agency of
transformation -- into an
exclusivist apparatus claiming to represent the interest of all people and a total monopoly in advocating the public
interest. It thereby tries to explain to some extent the dominant party syndrome
under liberation movements, which have been in power since Independence.[1]

March 23, 2010 -- Twenty years ago, at Namibia's first independence celebrations on March 21, 1990, many people would have shared the hopes and the euphoria of the moment. People thought that something good would come to us if we kept our peace and relinquished all the power to "the few who knew". Now that terrible hangover is wearing off and time has enforced a certain sobriety on us: the brutish reality of a rapidly falling life expectancy, unprecedented epidemic crises, poverty, vast malnutrition, a ruined education system and chronic mass unemployment, is inescapable.

Yes, there have been achievements: for some people with connections or capital or a lot of luck, life has improved as they moved into the other side of town, but for most citizens life has become meaner and shorter. There is a breakdown of all social and municipal services and a growing chauvinistic brutishness about the bureaucracy. At the same time we are witnessing a new desperate scramble for Africa's mineral wealth, that will make the evils of 19th century colonialism look pleasant in comparison. So let it be said, the struggle is not over.

January-April 2000 -- The streets of what is left of Dili, the capital of East Timor, were packed on October 31, 1999, as tens of thousands of people joined a procession led by Catholic Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo. Ostensibly to mark the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, the procession was the culmination of two tumultuous months that brought the brutal 24-year-long Indonesian occupation and annexation of East Timor to an end.